Learning to Get Past That Feeling of, 'But This Wasn't Supposed to Happen'

I was in middle school and I had a timeline of how I needed my life to go because with chronic pain, well at least for me, I needed to always plan my life out. In my planner everything was color-coded, doctors’ appointments are red, social life is green and work is purple.

So here was the outline of how I needed my life to go…

I would graduate high school in 2014, go to college (somewhere warm) and study marine biology, get a Bachelors of Science and graduate in 2018, and then take a year off to work for something related to either stingrays or sea turtles, then go back and get my Masters, then get my Ph.D. right after that and hope my work place would pay for it. I wanted to research and work in a lab. Notice the want(ed).

I no longer want that. I am also no longer on this schedule I had setup for myself 9 years ago. I may graduate now in 2020 with who knows what degree, and I keep telling myself, “Everything happens for a reason.” I have to push myself to believe the reason for this is the right job may not be there for me if I was to graduate in 2018 — that it will be there in 2020.

If chronic pain has taught me anything, it is to go with the flow and everything will work out in the end. If my timeline does not work out, maybe that’s a good thing — I’ll never know until I get passed that feeling of “but this wasn’t supposed to happen.”